What Operation Rescue Really Wants Is to Shut Down Clinic

The medical boards who pay attention to Operation Rescue reviews like this one usually have a zealot or two on them — the patient’s not complaining in this case, and if it were a court of law instead of a medical board, then Operation Rescue would have no standing or valid complaint.

Operation Rescue, a Kansas-based extremist organization with a long history of advocating violence, is using this case of surgical complications to try to shut down the clinic and take away the God-given moral agency of other women to make decisions about their reproductive lives.

We don’t always know a woman’s circumstances, and we know very little about the woman in this case and why she decided on an abortion. But we do know that she understood both her right and her responsibility to make the best choice she could about when and whether to bring this new life into the world. When a woman decides in consultation with her doctor, her family and her faith that she needs an abortion, she must be able to access medical care from a licensed, quality health provider - especially if complications arise.

Far from proving that this procedure should be illegal, rare instances of when things go badly make all the more necessary abundant options for women’s access to care. Rare instances of complications should not stop other women from accessing care. In fact, problems with surgeries are more likely to happen in an atmosphere of clandestine abortions than they are in publicly regulated clinics like Southwestern Women’s Options where standards of care are high.

In a room with 10 women, at least three of them have had an abortion - and all of them have known and loved someone who has. What would it be like if we reached out to each other so that this important life decision wasn’t such a lonely one? What would it be like if we trusted each other with our God-given moral authority to decide the outcome of a pregnancy from a place of self-knowledge, inner truth and goodness, instead of an extremist religious and cultural dictate of perfection, obedience and martyrdom.

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